The Pallbearers Club had the next Saturday off from the funeral home, so the plan was to get an earlier start on our ninety-minute drive to Providence. When Mercy screeched to a stop out front, I bounded from the house wearing my acid-washed jean jacket, of course, and a pair of acid-washed jeans. In my possession, a waxy bag of honey-dipped donuts, a spiral-bound notebook, two pens spiderwebbed in the tight metal coil, and the emotional baggage of another soul-sucking week of high school, one that prominently featured am-I-going-to-ask-anyone-to-the-prom-or-pretend-the-prom-doesn’t-exist anxieties.

The donuts were an offering Mercy refused, telling me she’d be all right. She didn’t look all right. Purple dusked under her eyes, and she sagged and listed in the bucket seat. For the first time in months, I wondered how much older she was than me.

She pawed around her ashtray, emerging with a roach pinched between two fingers. She asked, “Do you want the last hit before we go?” She had occasionally smoked weed on our drives around Beverly and had offered to share once. I’d declined and, I’m proud to say, had resisted an urge to detail a nonexistent asthma or blather on about the time my mother had let me try one of her cigarettes when I was seven and how I’d coughed until I’d puked. (Despite everything else, I do credit Mercy for making me marginally less pathetic.)

You’re welcome.

I said, “No, thanks,” and clipped my seat belt, which was all but useless as it held no tension, as slack as a Mr. Congeniality sash.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

She popped the roach into her mouth and swallowed.

“You can eat the roach?”

“Renfield” should eat it.

“Some of us do.” She reached into the backseat, retrieved her Polaroid, took a picture of me, and returned the camera from whence it came with the photo sticking out from the base. “It’s been a while since I shot you. And you’re vibing this morning.” She wiggled spooky-vibe fingers at me.

I thought about asking (again) what she did with the photos, specifically, the ones of me. Were her community college classmates and teacher clucking and tutting at some wall-sized impressionistic collage filled with images of my goofy mug? E-fucking-gads. I didn’t ask because Mercy seemed a bit off, and I didn’t want to risk souring the road trip before we’d even shoved off, so I said, “I’ll try not to get any vibing on the car seat.”

“You better, that shit doesn’t come out.”

I ate both donuts before we reached I-95 south, and consequently I wasn’t feeling all that great. The mix of cold air leaking through the cracked windows and the antifreeze and heat ozone from the vents wasn’t helping. Mercy had perked up, though, almost as soon as we’d left my house, and talked about the music scene in Providence.